


Grub-sitting

by traceExcalibur



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Babysitting, Ectobiology
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-06-22
Updated: 2011-06-22
Packaged: 2017-10-20 15:30:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,178
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/214242
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/traceExcalibur/pseuds/traceExcalibur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Taking place shortly after Karkat creates himself and his friends via ectobiological shenanigans, an exhausted and grumpy Karkat has to round up all of the grubs before they crawl off and hurt themselves.</p><p>I felt like writing something silly, I ended up with something that was also cute. Whoops!</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grub-sitting

Exhausted beyond all measure, there was a pleading tone to Karkat’s voice as he said, “FOR THE UMPTEENTH TIME, WILL YOU PLEASE JUST STAY. THE FUCK. AWAY. FROM THE STAIRS!”

The harried order came after what indeed felt like the hundredth time he had taken his eyes away from the brown-hued grub that, one day, would be his wheelchair-ridden friend Tavros only to have it ignore his orders and start crawling towards the staircase. Perhaps, under the influence of some eerie premonition, the wiggler had realized that it was destined for a stair-less future, because it seemed determined to make its way over to the staircase whenever Karkat’s attention wavered for the briefest of seconds. Every single time the chance arose it would try to descend the steps gracefully and succeed, rather, in toppling over, crashing all the way down and lying there, squirming around at the bottom, bawling its little eyes out and waiting for Karkat to come comfort it. Every single time, Karkat would have his attention focused on one of the other eleven, only to hear an ungodly shriek echoing out from the corridor, and he would rush over to find that, yes, Tavros had once again made a bid for freedom and failed spectacularly. He wanted nothing more than to leave the grub there and deal with the others, but whenever he tried the pangs of guilt in his stomach would convince him to go retrieve the grub and take it back upstairs, futilely hoping that it had learned its lesson this time.

Finally fed up, Karkat stomped over to the ectobiology machine, and wrested one of the glass jars away from it. Picking up Tavros, he plopped the wiggler down into the jar and then pushed it back into the machine for safekeeping. He saw the grub scratching against the glass and for a moment it seemed as if his guilt was going to bubble back up and force him to show the poor thing mercy, but then he remember that there were eleven other grubs crawling around and wreaking havoc, and he resolved not to give a fuck.

Scanning the room, he saw that his next target would be Nepeta, who had curled up into a ball and was rolling around the room in an olive blur. Every now and then she would crash into another grub, or a wall, and she would let out a little ‘nyan’ before changing direction and rolling off again. Karkat quickly put a stop to it; he impeded her progress with the help of his foot, and reached down to grab her before she could speed away. When he picked her up she seemed to latch onto his hand immediately – as expected, it took a concentrated minute of petting and an extremely reluctant kiss to her forehead to coax her into joining Tavros in his jar. Abandoned, she immediately pressed up against the glass to make kitty faces at Karkat as he walked away.

He was relieved to find that Feferi was very co-operative; to satisfy her, he needed only to step out of the room for a moment (which, considering these grubs, was a scary proposition) to fill a jar with water. Once back, he dropped her into the makeshift aquarium and she swam gleeful circles around the tight space; she let out a series of glubs and a beaming smile that was almost – not quite, but almost – enough to force Karkat to smile back.

Unfortunately for him, he had more pressing matters to attend to – he decided it would be convenient to look for Eridan next, and he found the wiggler curled up in a shadowy corner, watching the antics with an arrogant grin on his face. Presumably he considered himself higher than the others; did he already know his place on the hemospectrum, or was his annoying, egotistic personality already showing after mere hours of life? Either way, Karkat was unable to persuade him to leave his corner, and ended up forcibly picking the grub up and shoving him into Feferi’s jar. She immediately took to swimming around her new roommate, trying to convince him to join her in her fun. Eridan seemed to warm up to her presence, granting her the first genuine smile Karkat had seen him give.

Feferi and Eridan, best friends! Moirails for life – at least, that was what he had once thought.

Karkat snorted and turned his back on the pair of seadwellers, looking out for his next target. He noticed a faint trail of blue slime on the ground, which of course led to Equius, who was almost as sweaty as his six-sweeps counterpart. Karkat moved to retrieve the grub before he could stain the entirety of the lab, but he was momentarily distracted by Terezi, who was cackling and running her tongue over every inch of his candy-red younger self she could reach. He turned to look at her and _crunch_

Oh god.

Oh god, oh man, oh god.

Fearing the worst, Karkat looked down to find that he had stepped on poor Equius – the aspiring archer was far too STRONG to have been seriously hurt by the blow, but one of his candy corn horns had snapped off and he was looking back and forth between Karkat and the shattered horn with a bewildered look on his face. Sighing, and muttering, “OF COURSE, THAT’S HOW IT FUCKING HAPPENED, GODDAMN MY LIFE.” Karkat picked up the injured troll and gingerly set him down in a jar alongside Nepeta and Tavros.

His gaze next turned to his past self, who was still under attack from his future matesprit – as he made his way over to them, he glanced Gamzee rolling around in a stupor, dangerously close to falling off the table he was resting on; he made a mental note to go for his best friend next. Once he reached the grubs, an intertwined mass of red and teal, he pulled Terezi away from his past self. She pouted, but he ignored it and moved over to the ectobiology machine, co-opting a third jar to be used to store the two love-grubs. For the briefest moment he entertained the idea of sparing his past self the torture of being trapped in a container with Terezi, but then he remembered the torture that each and every one of his past and future selves had put him through, and he left his wiggler-self to his fate.

He then went back for…wait. What?

Gamzee was nowhere in sight.

Karkat spun around the room, panicked – the table upon which he had spotted the indigo-blooded grub was empty, as was the rest of the room.  Karkat quickly wrenched the fourth and final jar from the ectobiology machine and dashed out of the room, desperate to find the other wigglers before something terrible happened to them. If any of them were harmed in any way, he would be responsible for it – he had already snapped Equius’ horn, though he would never dare to tell him that, and for all he knew it was also somehow his fault that Nepeta was a batshit insane wannabe catgirl, or that Vriska was a megalomaniacal sociopath.

Just his luck – or rather, her luck – he found Vriska in the first hallway he checked, sitting quite innocently next to a dead imp. A quick investigation of the scene suggested that the imp had attempted to attack her, only to stumble and impale himself on his own sword. Shaking his head and muttering another “OF COURSE,” Karkat dropped Vriska into his jar; she seemed a put off by her sudden confinement, and pushed against the glass, trying to break free. Karkat smirked and resumed his search for the others.

Turning the corner, he caught a glimpse of Gamzee sitting on a machine at the other end of the hallway. An uneasy feeling settled into the pit of Karkat’s stomach as he wondered how his friend could have covered such a huge distance in such a short time, especially considering that he was only a few hours old. Karkat closed his eyes and shook his head, trying to shake away his worries, but it backfired – when he opened his eyes, Gamzee had vanished once more.

Growing more nervous by the second, Karkat dashed forward, rounding another corner, jumping into a transportalizer and bursting into the computer lab. Two of the remaining trolls were here; first was Kanaya, who had spent her time since she was born gathering together as many fabrics as she could find, most of them scavenged from the imps that Karkat had slain when he first arrived in the lab. She was curled up in a pile of them that had been arranged almost like a bird’s nest, sleeping softly, her little torso inflating and deflating with every breath. The sight seemed to calm Karkat’s nerves, and he stooped down, gently picking her up along with a bundle of cloth, cradling her in his hand and setting her down next to Vriska. She seemed very comfortable there. Karkat smiled, or at least his face contorted into a shape that would have resembled a smile if seen on somebody less angry than he was, and he made sure not to jostle the container and wake her when he stood back up.

His spirits were quickly deflated when he saw the other troll in the room. Sollux was hopping about on one of the computers, trying to manoeuver his pudgy little frame around the keyboard. Karkat glanced at the monitor, and his jaw dropped in disbelief. In the two hours since he had been born, Sollux had managed to type out a working .ath code. Not only that, it was much better than any code that Karkat could have made – the formatting was significantly cleaner, and the code was apparently designed to coat an unsuspecting victim in mind honey upon the death of whoever wrote it. Grumbling, Karkat grabbed his mustard-blooded “best friend” and shoved him into the jar.

Now there were only two trolls left, Aradia and Gamzee. Aradia was found in the next room Karkat checked; after what Karkat could only assume was a series of surprisingly acrobatic leaps, she had managed to climb up to a window and was about to escape onto the surface of the meteor.  He dashed forwards and picked her up before she had the chance to vacate the premises, and dropped her into the jar. She immediately started crawling up the sides of the glass, and Karkat corrected his assumption from earlier – her little feeler-like legs must have possessed some sort of suction capability. Sighing, he resolved to keep one hand covering the top of the jar at all times, to prevent the adventurous grub from slipping out undetected.

Finally, Gamzee was the only wiggler left, but he was nowhere to be found. A search of the next three possible rooms yielded no results, and Karkat half-heartedly returned to the ectobiology room to ensure that the others were safe. He was reassured to see that everyone was fine, although past Karkat had a look of supreme dissatisfaction on his face as a result of Terezi coddling him. He still had not seen Gamzee again, though, and he was starting to become quite worri _oh my fucking god there was something on his head what the grubtingling fuck._

Karkat swatted at his head frantically and discovered that Gamzee had somehow managed to crawl up the entirety of his body and make it on top of his head without being noticed…or perhaps Gamzee had simply teleported on top of him. The idea was very disturbing either way, and Karkat hurriedly stuffed Gamzee into the jar before slamming it back into place in the ectobiology machine, preventing the trolls from escaping again.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Karkat leaned back against the machine, muttering about all the pain he had gone through and wondering if any of his other teammates could have made it through the pain of grubsitting. “OF COURSE THEY FUCKING COULDN’T.” was the answer he arrived at.

Ready to leave the infernal lab, and hoping he would never have to return, Karkat planted one hand on the machine and pushed himself upwards – he was about to head to the exit transportalizer when he heard an ominous clicking and whirring sound coming from behind him. Horrorstruck, he watched as the machine produced a second set of wigglers, who were almost, but not quite the same as the first. One of them looked like Tavros, but he was distinguished by a tiny pair of wings that had just barely sprouted from his back. Another one bore a striking resemblance to Vriska, but with almost twice as much hair forming a tangled and matted mass on her scalp.

Karkat had only one moment to bemoan his fate and wonder where he was going to find another set of containers for these new assholes before the grubs all started to crawl or roll or climb off in different directions, and all hell broke loose.


End file.
